I can’t resist bring this up again this year. The fun part of the internet is when the creative meets the whimsical. An excellent example is the website “Is it Christmas?” at https://isitchristmas.com/. I’ve known about this site for several years now, and it is still active. Be sure to check it tomorrow (although you
Looking for an unusual gift, especially if money is no object? There are plenty of them around. Here are some ideas. The Neiman Marcus department store has always been famous for luxury gifts. Their website has a “Fantasy Gifts” section, http://www.neimanmarcus.com/Gifts/Fantasy-Gifts/cat48140738_cat000672_cat000000/c.cat, which includes — For the fantasy thespian, there’s walk-on role in the Broadway musical Waitress
Some people claim to be able to talk to animals (or at least communicate with them), but talking to a plant? There may now be a way to break through the human-plant communication barrier. A team of scientists has embedded living spinach plants with carbon nanotubes designed to detect the kinds of compounds found in
If you flip a coin and get heads three straight times, what do you think the fourth flip will be? The odds are still 50-50 you will get heads again because each flip is independent (and the coin can’t remember how it landed in the past). Yet that’s not what human nature wants to believe.
You may have read that last week the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced they had agreed to cut oil production by about 1.2 million barrels a day. For decades OPEC has been the organization we’ve all loved to hate. But who was the first to come up with the idea of limiting oil
Occasionally I run across something that just begs to be shared. According to today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac, December 4 is the birthday of British essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle, who was born in Ecclefachan, Scotland (1795), and is best known for writing The French Revolution: A History (1837), which inspired Charles Dickens
If the Sun were somehow to disappear, we all know we’d be in big trouble. Life on Earth would swiftly become impossible. But for you science types, I’ve found a graphic that describes exactly what would happen and when. Of course, we’re far enough away that, even at the speed of light, nothing would happen
With all the talk about immigration concerns in this country, I ran across an interesting article on The Christian Science Monitor website entitled “Could Embracing Migrants Help Solve Italian Villages’ Aging Problem?” (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2016/1030/Could-embracing-migrants-help-solve-Italian-villages-aging-problem) In Italy, the birth rate is not high enough to prevent a shrinking population. This is especially true in Southern Italy’s villages,
As a Disneyana fan, having songs stuck in my head comes with the territory (it’s what kind of world after all?). I’ve always accepted it as part of my life. But now, thanks to some new research, there may be a scientific explanation. In a study published in the academic journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity
I’ve recently heard a radical idea: we should become a cashless society. The technology is pretty much here, with credit and debit cards, PayPal, and even Bitcoins. Other countries are moving in that direction. South Korea has established a goal of becoming a cashless society by 2020 (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/03/488_199146.html). India and the Scandinavian countries are also